Effect of electrical parameters on the EDM performances of titanium alloy

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the EDM machining of Ti-6*AI-4V using Taguchi approaches. Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) is a potential process to machine such material due to the properties of non-mechanical contact between tool and workpiece and capable to machine intricate shape. However, very little work has been reported on EDM of Ti-6A1-4V. Therefore the optimization of EDM process variables is important towards improvement. In this work, the influence of design factors namely intensity (I), pulse duration (//), pulse-off time (to) and open circuit voltage (U) were studied to obtain the optimum EDM performance measures of TU6A1-4V machining including Material Removal Rate (MRR), Volumetric Electrode Wear Rate (EW) and surface roughness average (Ra). Beside that, die overall evaluation criteria (OEC) which represents all three responses into single index were also proposed. With OEC, complicated evaluation of multi responses can be avoided.